He stood there, his gloved hands hanging loosely, an unlikeable and pathetic figure but not without dignity.
"At least," thought Felix. "He has the
Alt grace to know when he's not wanted."
Suddenly, and with a stiff little gesture, Proctor held out his left hand to Eleanor Maxie and she took it.
Stephen went with him to the door.
While he was away no one spoke. Felix felt the heightening of tension and his nostrils twitched at the remembered smell of fear.
They must know now. They had been told everything except the actual name. But how far were they letting themselves recognize the truth? From under lowered eyelids he watched them. Deborah was curiously tranquil as if the end of lying and deceit had brought their own peace. He did not believe that Deborah knew what was coming. Eleanor Maxie's face was grey, but the folded hands lay relaxed in her lap. He could almost believe that her thoughts were elsewhere. Catherine Bowers sat stiffly, her lips pursed as if in disapproval. Earlier Felix had thought that she was enjoying herself. Now he was not so sure. He noticed with sardonic satisfaction the clenching of her hands, the nervous twitching at the corner of her eyes. Suddenly Stephen was back with them and Felix spoke.
"Hasn't this gone on long enough?
We've heard the evidence. That back door was opened until Maxie locked it at twelve-thirty-three a.m. Some time before then someone got in and killed Sally. The police haven't found out who and they aren't likely to find out. It could have been anyone. I suggest that we none of us say anything more." He looked round at them.
The warning was unmistakable. Dalgleish said mildly:
"'You are suggesting that a perfect stranger entered the house, made no attempt to steal, went unerringly to Miss Jupp's room and strangled her while, with no attempt of raising the alarm, she lay back obligingly on the bed?"
"She could have invited him to come, whoever he was," said Catherine.
Dalgleish turned to her.
"But she was expecting Proctor. We can't imagine that she wanted to make a party of that little transaction. And whom would she invite? We have checked on everyone who knew her."
Tor God's sake stop discussing it," cried Felix. "Can't you see that's what he wants you to do! There's no proof!"
"Isn't there?" said Dalgleish softly. "I wonder."
"We know who didn't do it, anyway," said Catherine. "It wasn't Stephen or Derek Pullen because they've got alibis and it wasn't Mr. Proctor because of his hand. Sally couldn't have been killed by her uncle."
"No," said Dalgleish. "Nor by Martha
Bultitaft who didn't know how the girl had died until Mr. Hearne told her. Nor by you, Miss Bowers, who knocked at her door and tried to speak to her after she was dead. Nor by Mrs. Riscoe, whose fingernails would inevitably have left scratches.
No one can grow nails that length overnight and the murderer didn't wear gloves. Nor by Mr. Hearne, whatever he might like me to think. Mr. Hearne didn't know which room Sally slept in. He had to ask Mr. Maxie where he should carry the ladder."
"Only a fool would have shown that he knew. I could have pretended."
"Only you weren't pretending," said
Stephen roughly. "You can keep your bloody patronage to yourself. You were the last person to want Sally dead. Once Sally was installed here Deborah might have married you. Believe me, you wouldn't have got her on any other terms. She'll never marry you now and you know it."
Eleanor Maxie looked up and said quietly:
"I went to her room to talk to her. It seemed that the marriage might not be so bad a thing if she were really fond of my son. I wanted to find out what she felt. I was tired and I should have waited till the morning. She was lying there on her bed and singing to herself. It would have been all right if she hadn't done two things. She laughed at me. And she told me, Stephen, that she was going to have your child. It was so very quick. One second she was alive and laughing. The next she was a dead thing in my hands."
"Then it was you!" said Catherine in a whisper. "It was you."
"Of course," said Eleanor Maxie gently.
"Think it out for yourself. Who else could it have been?"
The Maxies thought going to prison must be rather like going to hospital, except that it was even more involuntary. Both were abnormal and rather frightening experiences to which the victim reacted with a clinical detachment and the onlookers with a determined cheerfulness which was intended to create confidence without giving the suspicion of callousness.
Eleanor Maxie, accompanied by a calm and tactful woman police sergeant, went to enjoy the comfort of a last bath in her own house. She had insisted on this and, as with the final preparations for hospital, no one liked to point out that bathing was the first procedure inflicted on admission. Or was there, perhaps, a difference between prisoners in custody and those convicted?
Felix might have known but no one cared to ask. The police car driver waited in the background, watchful and unobtrusive as an ambulance attendant. There were the last instructions, the messages for friends, the telephone calls and the hurried packing.
Mr. Hinks arrived from the vicarage, breathless and unsurprised, steeling himself to give advice and comfort but looking so desperately in need of them himself that Felix took him firmly by the arm and walked with him back to the vicarage.
From a window Deborah watched them talking together as they passed out of sight and wondered briefly what they were saying. As she was mounting the stairs to her mother Dalgleish was telephoning from the hall. Their eyes met and held. For a second she thought he was going to speak, but his head bent again to the receiver and she passed on her way, recognizing suddenly and without surprise that, had things been different, here was the man to whom she would have instinctively turned for reassurance and advice.
Stephen, left alone, recognized his misery for what it was, an overmastering pain which had nothing in common with the dissatisfaction and ennui which he had previously thought of as unhappiness. He had taken two drinks but realized in time that drinking wasn't helping. What he needed was someone to minister to his misery and assure him of its essential unfairness. He went in search of Catherine.
He found her kneeling before a small case in his mother's room wrapping jars and bottles in tissue paper. When she looked up at him he saw that she had been crying. He was shocked and irritated.
There was no room in the house for a lesser grief. Catherine had never mastered the art of crying appealingly. Perhaps that was one reason why she had learnt early to be stoical in grief as in other things.
Stephen decided to ignore this intrusion on his own misery.
"Cathy," he said. "Why on earth did she confess? Hearne was perfectly right.
They would never have proved it if she'd only kept quiet."
He had only called her Cathy once before and then, too he had wanted something from her. Even in the moment of physical love it had struck her as an affectation. She looked up at him. "You don't know her every well, do you? She was only waiting for your father to die before she confessed. She didn't want to leave him and she promised him that he wouldn't be sent away. That was the only reason why she kept silent. She told Mr. Hinks about Sally when she walked back to the vicarage with him earlier tonight."
"But she sat so calmly through all the disclosures!"
"I suppose she wanted to know just what happened. None of you told her anything. I think she worried most thinking that it was you who had visited Sally and locked the door."
"I know. She tried to ask me. I thought she was asking me if I was the murderer. They'll have to reduce the charge. It wasn't premeditated after all. Why doesn't Jephson hurry up and come. We've telephoned for him."
Catherine was sorting a few books she had taken from the bedside table, considering whether to pack them. Stephen went on: